6 Reasons Your School or Service Needs a Parent Education Strategy

Sometimes when I start talking about the I Matter Project I can feel a little embarrassed.  The thing is, the issues the project is addressing are really not rocket science.    It is not as if I am speaking about things that people don't already sort of know.   

The difficulty is that ideas and issues that seem quite straightforward, are not actually happening when it comes to practice.  Everyone knows for example that parenting is important when it comes to helping children, but parent education is not anyone's primary business  As a result, what should be happening, is not actually happening.  

So here are 6 reasons that your school or service needs a parent education strategy:

i) Mental health outcomes are massively impacted by parenting competence
ii) Educational outcomes are massively impacted by parenting competence
iii) Challenging behaviour and Youth offending outcomes are massively impacted by parenting competence
iv) Parenting lack of confidence is widespread
v) Hoping that 'someone' will address the parenting issues means that you have left responsibility for a massive factor that will impact on your own outcomes to someone else.
vi) Anything less than a clear strategy is unlikely to make a dint on the scale of the unmet needs

Hope that is enough to get you thinking.